Poker and other card games have been played as leisure time activities by the public for many years. Many variations on the standard five card poker game are played by the public. In most of these games, the basic rules of card priority and rank are consistent for designating a winning poker hand. This commonly-used rank order of "winning" hands in five card poker is as follows: Royal Flush, Straight Flush, Four of a Kind, Full House, Flush, Straight, Three-of-a-kind a-Kind, Two Pair, One Pair, and "High Card in Hand." However, because of the complexities of poker, and the difficulty in calculating table odds, it has rarely been introduced as a casino table game in which each player is pitted against the house.
Conventional poker games involve multiple players each being dealt a hand by a dealer. The player still remaining at the conclusion of all betting, with the highest hand, wins. Draw poker is a variation of the standard game, wherein after the initial cards are dealt, the players have an opportunity to trade in (discard) some number of the cards in their hand for new cards from the dealer.
In many establishments that have allowed legalized gaming, the house "hosts" the game by providing: the dealer; the playing table; the chairs; and the cards, but is not involved in the wagering. In some cases the house collects a small percentage of every winning bet to compensate for providing the facilities. In other instances, the house collects a small percentage of each player's bet (the "rake"). The various payment schemes are a direct result of the fact that, in the majority of casinos, players do not compete against the house, but rather against other players in the group.
Many people find this type of casino poker unappealing for exactly this reason. By competing against fellow players and friends, but not the house, the money paid to the winners comes not from a distant, impersonal entity, "the house", but rather from the fellow players and friends. This makes many "occasional" gamblers uncomfortable. For this reason, most of the popular casino games involve players being in competition against the house.
Another deficiency of casino card room poker is that there are no bonus payments for particularly good hands. For example, royal flushes are a very rare occurrence, but the winning player with this hand collects exactly the same amount as a winning player collecting with only two pair. The majority of winnings in poker result from successful bluffing strategies during the betting round. This too discourages the "occasional" gambler. In addition, standard poker games do not provide a way for the player to win large payoffs as in other casino games. For this reason, there exists a need for a poker game that pits the players against the house and involves additional payments for particularly good hands, as well as the opportunity to win "sweepstakes" payoffs. It is an object of the invention to provide such a game.